CES Photos: Motorola Atrix Laptop Dock

One of the stranger stories from Motorola this year comes in the form of the Laptop Dock accessory, designed to partner with Motorola’s new Atrix phone. Whilst other manufacturers are trying to pack in enough power for you to dump your laptop, Motorola is turning your smartphone into a laptop, almost literally.

Motorola’s idea is that you can dock the Atrix into the back of this laptop accessory and then make use of the larger screen and dedicated keyboard. Docking the phone automatically switches the display to the accessory. The laptop dock itself is completely dumb – all the brains come from the phone itself (brains in the form of dual core processor, 1GB of RAM, Android 2.2). However, there is additional battery housed in the dock, so you can increase the battery life, which will be useful for anyone settling down to watch a film.

Is it a genius move? Has technology come a full circle and eaten itself for dinner? The jury’s out. And the pricing, sadly, is not – and that could be just the thing to decide it.